This invention relates to the Armstrong process as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,779,761, 5,958,106 and 6,409,797, the disclosures of each of which is incorporated herein by reference. As disclosed in the above-three patents, alloys or ceramics can be prepared by establishing a mixture of gases which are fed, as disclosed in the above-referenced patents, subsurface to a reducing metal thereby to initiate the reduction of the gas mixture to the corresponding alloy or ceramic. In general, the most obvious way to provide the mixed vapor is to introduce the constituent vapors in the required atomic ratio to a manifold and feed the mixed material to the reducing metal.
The present invention relates to another means for mixing the alloy or ceramic constituents prior to the introduction of the mixed vapor to the reducing metal. In the present invention, the various constituents of the alloy or ceramic are initially mixed as a liquid which is thereafter boiled. After the liquid is boiled and reaches equilibrium, the vapor coming off the liquid has the same atomic ratio as the feed liquid to the boiler, which may or may not be different than the liquid in the boiler. At steady state, the vapor from the boiler can be fed to the Armstrong process in the same manner as illustrated in the three referenced patents to produce an alloy or ceramic having a constant atomic ratio.
This invention simplifies the handling of materials, and particularly those materials such as aluminum chloride which sublimate rather than boil. For those materials, the solid is heated in a vessel under pressure so that a liquid is formed and that liquid is thereafter transmitted to a boiler, as will be shown. By way of example a boiler having feed streams of aluminum chloride and vanadium chloride and titanium chloride in atomic ratios of 6% Al and 4% V and the remainder Ti will produce at equilibrium a vapor of 6% Al, 4% V and 90% Ti, even if the atomic ratios of the constituents of the liquid in the boiler differ. Using the equilibrium vapor as a feed in the process disclosed in the referenced patents produces a 6% Al, 4% V, titanium alloy.
The invention applies to a wide variety of alloys or ceramics and simplifies the materials handling of the constituent parts of each alloy produced in the Armstrong Process.